Moxos

The Llanos de Moxos are vast lowlands in the southwestern Amazon, where seasonal flooding spreads across savannas and forest islands. Their Indigenous inhabitants reshaped the landscape over centuries, building raised fields, causeways, canals and mounds. The raised fields, in particular, provided cultivated ground above the surrounding wetlands. These earthworks reveal communities that cultivated and travelled through a country transformed each year by water.

In the late seventeenth century Jesuit missionaries established settlements among the peoples of Moxos. Loreto was founded in 1682, followed by other missions including Trinidad. The missions gathered people from different communities under Spanish colonial rule, bringing new religious and political institutions to the plains. Indigenous peoples nevertheless retained languages and traditions that distinguished them from their neighbours across this diverse region.